One
of the interesting challenges for journalists and public health
professionals is figuring out how to compare, and visualize, health
care statistics in a demographic and geographic environment. 
Yeah, that's one of the things that epidemologists are supposed to do
every day.  But it ain't easy.



In the current issue of ArcUser, Chakib Battioui, of the University of Louisville, Kentucky, has written an interesting article on “Calculating Health Disparity Indexes.”



“Socioeconomic indexes are strongly believed to be associated with the
risk of disease. However, there is no consensus in the United States
regarding which area-based measure should be used to assess
socioeconomic inequalities in health….

   “To study the relationship between the rate of cervical cancer and
economic status, the project used the Socio Economic Risk Index (SERI).
SERI classifies people in public databases based on residential
neighborhood characteristics and permits the calculation of
population-based rates stratified by location….

     “There are technical and conceptual obstacles to the adoption of
area-based measures for public health. Currently, there is no consensus
in the United States regarding which area-based measures should be used
and what level of geography should be used to measure or monitor
socioeconomic inequalities in health.”

We're told that there might well be another flu vaccine shortage
this coming winter.  Heads up journos are starting to think now
about how to cover — and illustrate — THAT story.

From the good ol' Librarians'
Index to the Internet comes a good site/toolbox for learning and teaching
stats.

“The Claremont Colleges' “Web
Interface for Statistics Education” (WISE) seeks to expand
teaching resources offered through Introductory Statistics courses, especially
in the social sciences. This project aims to develop an on-line teaching tool
to take advantage of the unique hypertextual and presentational benefits of the
World Wide Web (WWW). This teaching tool's primary application is as a
supplement to traditional teaching materials, addressing specific topics that
instructors have difficulty in presenting using traditional classroom
technologies. The tool serves to promote self-paced learning and to provide a
means for advanced students to review concepts.”

Last week, NOAA predicated a serious hurricane season a'comin' in the Atlantic, which has implications for the entire U.S. East Coast.  That's last week's
news, but if one lives in California, Mexico, Central America or Japan,
then today there's always the possibility of a major shaker.  And
those are just risks imposed by nature.  Modeling these and other
hazards of life is the mission of RMS, a fascinating California company demonstrating innovative thinking and analytic tools.

“RMS brings together a unique, multidisciplinary team of experts to
create solutions for its clients’ natural hazard and financial risk
management challenges. We are the technical leader in our market, with
over 100 engineers and scientists devoted to the development of risk
models. Of this number, approximately fifty percent hold advanced
degrees in their field of expertise.

Our specialists track research among leading experts and academic
institutions worldwide, and supplement this knowledge with internal R&D
to ensure that our models provide the most complete and accurate
quantification of risk.”

Yup — our kind of guys.  Examples of the output of these “risk models” can be found here.  Of special interest to U.S. journalists are the Catastrophe Risk maps.  (They are a bit too small to read in detail, but big enough to get the gist of some of the RMS product.)

We hope to report more next week about RMS, how it does what it does and how there might be some synergy there for analytic journalists.

Here
at the IAJ we believe one of the reasons people come to newspapers or
broadcast stations is to get the data which, upon analysis, they can
turn into information that helps them make decisions.  Ergo, the
more meaningful data a journalistic institution can provide, the
greater value that institution has for a community.



A good example arrived today thanks to Tara Calishain, creator of ResearchBuzz.  She writes:

** Getcher Cheap Gas Prices on Google Maps

<http://www.researchbuzz.org/getcher_cheap_gas_prices_on_google_maps.shtml>



“Remember
when I was saying that I would love a Gasbuddy / Google Maps mashups
that showed cheap gas prices along a trip route?   Turns out
somebody has already done it —  well, sorta. You can specify a
state, city  (only selected cities are available) and 
whether you're looking for regular or diesel  fuel. Check it out
at  http://www.ahding.com/cheapgas/ “

Would readers appreciate this sort of data?  We think so,
especially if there was an online sign-up and the news provider would
deliver the changing price info via e-mail or IM much like Travelocity
tells us when airline ticket prices change by TK dollars.

Regional Economic Models Inc. cordially invites you to join us on June 7th for a teleconference regarding Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC). 
On Friday May 13th Department of Defense released Recommendations to
the BRAC commission. We feel that a discussion of BRAC studies and
analysis methods would be helpful to a number of communities:



Topics to be discussed include:

– Demographic effects of active military, reservists, & dependents.

– Migration effects of re-alignment or closures.

– Dynamic effects of government spending over time.

– The Impacts of lost or reduced civilian contracts.

– Previous BRAC studies using the REMI model.

– Other topics by REMI Guest Speakers.



A
presentation will be sent out before the call in order to direct and
facilitate discussion. There will be two teleconferences taking place
on the 7th, one at 10am, one at 4pm  EST, hosted by Frederick
Treyz and Jonathan Lee.



There is
no fee for participation, but space is limited.  If you are
planning on joining us or would like to participate in the discussion
please respond to this e-mail, register online at www.remi.com or
contact us by phone at (413) 549-1169.



We look forward to speaking with you in June!



Yours truly,

Frederick Treyz, Ph.D.

Chief Executive Officer

Regional Economic Models, Inc.

306 Lincoln Ave.

Amherst, MA 01002

T. 413-549-1169

F. 413-549-1038

Fredtreyz@remi.com

www.remi.com

The
power of good infographics is that they can greatly aid in the 
upstream aspects of  journalism — providing insight for
journalists to understand what's happening with a particular phenomena
— and then downstream, to help journalists tell the story and for the
audience to understand it.



The Digital Revolution has upped the ante far beyond what good ol' Leonardo was using and envisioning.  One of the innovators in today's datasphere is Alexander Tsiaras.  A recent story in Digital Journal has this to say about Tsiaras's company, Anatomical Travelogue:



“Digital Journal — At ideaCity04, one presenter was so overflowing with
information that host Moses Znaimer had to enter stage right and
patiently sit beside him, a silent reminder to wrap it up. But you
couldn’t ask Alexander Tsiaras to gloss over the wonders of the human
body, from blood flow to cell mutation.

In 2003, his book of images of fetal development, From Conception to Birth, sold 150,000 copies and his latest work is Part Two of this fantastic voyage, The Architecture and Design of Man and Woman. For a chapter on sex, Tsiaras even scanned an employee doing the deed with his girlfriend — all in the name of science.”

Jump into the study of epidemiology with Prof. David Kleinbaum and Prof. Nancy Barker in the online course “Fundamentals of Epidemiology” at statistics.com June 10 – July 15.  Using their electronic textbook “ActiveEpi”, this introductory course emphasizes the underlying  concepts andmethods of epidemiology. Topics covered  include: study designs (clinical trials, cohort studies,  case-control studies, and cross-sectional studies),  measures of disease frequency and effect.



Dr. Kleinbaum, professor at Emory University, is internationally known for his textbooks in statistical and epidemiologic methods and also as an outstanding teacher.  He is the author of “Epidemiologic Research-Principles and Quantitative Methods”, “Logistic Regression- A Self-Learning Text”, and “Survival  Analysis- A Self Learning Text”.  Prof. Barker is a consulting biostatistician and a co-author of the “ActivEpi Companion Text”, and has over 10 years of experience teaching short courses in epidemiology and  biostatistics at Emory and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.



The course takes place online at statistics.com in a  series of 5 weekly lessons and assignments. Course participants work directly with both instructors via a  private discussion board.  Participate in the course at  your own convenience; there are no set times when you are required to be online.



For registration and information:

http://www.statistics.com/content/courses/epi1/index.html



Peter Bruce

courses@statistics.com



P.S.  Coming up June 3 at statistics.com:  “Toxicological

Risk Assessment” and “Using the Census's new 'American

Community Survey' ” and, on June 10, “Categorical Data

Analysis.”

We have long admired and appreciated the work of Dartmouth Professor J. Laurie Snell and his colleagues at the CHANCE project.  (There are some terrific online lectures on all phases of statistics and probability at the Chance Lectures)



We received the following recently:

In order to give Chance News the chance for a longer life we have changed it to
a ChanceWiki. The new url
is

http://chance.dartmouth.edu/chancewiki/



For the ChanceWiki we
are using the software developed for the very successful free Encyclopedia
Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/



The wiki software makes
it easy for anyone to add an item or to make changes in an existing article
(hopefully an improvement) in the current Chance News.



On the Main Page
of the ChanceWiki you will find links to the current Chance news and “How to
submit a new article or edit an existing article”.



We hope you will try
making a contribution. If you have any questions I will be happy to try to
answer them.



J. Laurie Snell



jlsnell@dartmouth.edu

One
of the things we've learned in the past decade is that journalists and
police departments often are asking the same questions and use — or
could use — many of the same methods to analyze data.  In fact,
we would argue that crime analysts and criminologists are doing some of
the best work in the social sciences today. 

One of
the issues of import to both professions is racial profiling.  A
recent publication from the U.S. Dept. of Justice suggests some methods
for analyzing the that data.

A Suggested Approach to Analyzing Racial
Profiling: Sample Templates for Analyzing Car-Stop Data

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office
of Community Oriented Policing Services

A Suggested Approach to Analyzing Racial
Profiling: Sample Templates for Analyzing Car-Stop Data (PDF; 468 KB)

“Decisions regarding the merits of
racial profiling concerns are important and should not be based on either
anecdotal evidence or incomplete analysis. Evaluating the extent and nature of
police profiling patterns may lead to decisions regarding proper training and
appropriate police tactics. It is crucial that such evaluations rely on
appropriate methodological approaches, objectively obtained data, and
appropriate benchmarks or comparison guidelines.“

One of the underlying — and motivating — assumptions here at the IAJ is that having good data is a prerequisite to
doing good analysis.  And the analytic journalist needs to know
first what data is available before any questions can be raised about
the quality and defintion of that data.  All this means we are
talking about transparency in government and, when possible, the
private sector.  (It also applies to transparency in
journalism.  More on that here and in days to come.)

On that site you will find:
“This Special Report on Public Sector Transparency illustrates current international trends in
advancing transparency through civil society, government and the media. Through extensive interviews
with leaders across a range of sectors as well as survey feedback from Development Gateway users, this Report
explores the practical issues of ensuring openness in governments around the world.”